Arnold J. Toynbee

The history of international thought has been one of the most significant developments within International Relations (IR) during the past twenty years. Scholars have transformed the canonical understanding of the discipline, presenting a much more accurate account of its origins, consolidation and evolution. This essay focuses on a controversial author as Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975). Indeed, he was an heterodox historian who has also offered innovative but eccentric interpretations in the field of IR. This essay examines the tangled up relationship between history and international relations in Toynbee’s works in order to underline his limits and describe his legacy.

This thesis is about the possibility of regaining global leadership by America during Obama's administrations. The thesis is an example of policy-oriented research in the service of global change. Foreign policy scholars are divided as to the degree of influence to accord to human agency and the role of political leaders in shaping the international system. Can human agency shape history? This thesis argues that during both administrations America tried to retrieve international legitimacy, leadership and respect around the world by designing a coherent foreign policy strategy. The thesis examined to what extent President Obama's election marked an effective victory for modern diplomacy, renewal of Earth and advancement of history. Each time a presidential candidate is elected into office, he or she usually brings a measure of reassurance, hope and positive, promising energy. But very soon the weight and the sheer magnitude of the domestic and foreign problems that demand attention, immediate action and genial solution become evident. Generations of thinkers have grappled with threats to the prosperity and progress of civilisation which only testifies to the fact that novel, global challenges cannot be solved overnight. They require bold, creative and adaptive responses. While mankind continues to experiment with innovative solutions, this thesis stated that America's main tool for restoring global leadership will be realist diplomacy based on the principle of 'consensual leadership.' Such diplomacy required an individual to act as 'a transformational leader' offering decisive leadership in foreign affairs while promoting global consensus. The promise was that thanks to consensus higher order of magnitude of challenges such as climate change will be solved. President Obama's rhetoric suggested that he acquired strategic vision while activating the international community, global public opinion and world's leaders around the aim of advancement of civilisation by addressing the challenge of climate change through effective climate diplomacy. An examination of his diplomacy through analytic, theoretical lens revealed that there was no grand strategic breakthrough or a comprehensive success although there were many small, promising victories. This thesis agrees with Indyk (et al. 2012) that President Obama’s foreign policy "has repeatedly manifested a combination of the realist’s pragmatic approach to the world with the idealist’s progressive approach to a new world order that President sought to shape.” Could it be defined as "bending history"? It appears so, but there is no evidence for that so far. President Obama's diplomacy was uplifting and convincing, but the truth of the matter is that his promise has been better than performance. Any progress that was achieved in the Obama's years seemed to develop through the gradual, step-by-step evolution of policy while sometimes it appeared that a more concrete action was required. President Obama has proven to be progressive where possible but pragmatic when necessary.” As Indyk, Lieberthal, and O’Hanlon (2012) noted, by setting very ambitious goals for his administration and then following more cautious and incremental foreign policies, President Obama has laid himself open to criticism. This is because the nexus between climate, natural resources, prosperity, and stability alongside with unresolved migration crisis could lead to serious displacements of millions of people. Earth will not wait until humanity reaches a global consensus, it will try to restore the balance with or without us. Why is that? Because the essence of the emergent crisis of global warming is that as a global civilisation humans are importing enormous amounts of energy from the crust of the Earth and exporting entropy (that is, progressive disorder) into the previously stable, though dynamic, ecological systems upon which the continued flourishing of civilisation depends (Gore, 2013: xvii). These new flows of energy, originally imported to the Earth from the sun ages ago, have been stabilised underground for millions of years as inert deposits of carbon. (Ibid.) "By mobilising them, however, and injecting the waste products from their combustion into the atmosphere, we are breaking down the stable climate pattern that has persisted since not long after the end of the last Ice Age ten millennia ago." (Ibid.) What was in balance, was forced into imbalance, and it will eventually return to a natural balance. And this seems to be one weakness of President Obama's diplomacy which could have restored balance to the world but could not break or overthrow the existing system. This weakness would have been overcome if the intensity of rhetoric could be matched by the simultaneous strength of a long-lasting action. President Obama alone could not solve the climate crisis, he needed support from other world's leaders. Due to the crisis of global leadership, leaders cannot overcome the slow progress of diplomacy and enact prompt decisions. Bureaucracy delays policy implementation. Millions are suffering due to catastrophic consequences of climate change in various places around the world such as the Philippines, Italy or America, climate change is unresolved. Although the 2015 Paris Agreement was good and constructive, it is unlikely to be ambitious enough and effective enough to prevent dangerous climate change, unless there is, in addition, a widespread moral consent plus global consciousness that climate change is the defining global challenge that must be decisively and dynamically resolved by local communities in the current century. If the message sent by the scientific community is correct, namely that "an effective architecture of a governance system for planetary stewardship is likely to be polycentric and multi-level rather than centralized and hierarchical" as suggested by Steffen (et al., 2011: 757); then seekers, i.e. scientists seeking effective solutions to climate change need to focus on whether and how such novel governance can be integrated to reach convincing decisions and shape policies from local to global level. Whereas at the moment, it seems that global leaders meet and convene participating in protracted, high-table, great-power diplomacy, but they have not reached consensus on novel solutions to global challenges that would enable the bold 'jump' or a decisive 'push' so that our civilisation could move to the next level. There is pressure on world leaders, as "effective planetary stewardship must be achieved quickly since the momentum of the Anthropocene threatens to tip the complex Earth System out of the cyclic glacial-interglacial pattern during which Homo sapiens has evolved and developed", so the argument that climate change occurs only in cycles is not complete. "Without planetary stewardship, the Anthropocene threatens to become for humanity a one-way trip to an uncertain future in a new, but very different, state of the Earth System" when our civilisation could undergo a crisis (Ibid.). A crisis of climate leadership could turn into a planetary catastrophe. The hope that human imagination can solve important problems implies a belief that a bright idea will be found. The hope is that "every system of domination including our twenty-first-century globalization generates its own distinctive set of opportunities for a challenge, response and finally transformation." Given the diminishing time our civilisation has to avert the ecological crisis, "we must find a way of working more creatively with, around, above, and below this system rather than entertain the political fantasy that we can design and build new global governance institutions from scratch." (Christoff and Eckersly, 2013: 164). Given the stalemate in international climate change negotiations, we have to never give up. A carefully crafted, minilateral solution could inject political momentum into gridlocked international processes and move beyond the impasse. (Falkner, 2015: 21). It would provide new forms of collective leadership in a post-hegemonic world so ascribing high levels of international agreement for its implementation in key, world capitals would be essential. It would require reconciling existing multilateral regimes with shifts in the global power balance away from elitism. It involves: 1) Holding those in power to be responsible for climatic degradation 2) Harder global politics, 3) Smarter use of technology 4) Persuasive diplomacy and passionate campaigning. Moreover, it involves ameliorating arguments, abandoning bickering and disputes, rejecting selfish tribalism, so that deniers could not boast to deny the truth. Innovative approaches to global governance demand adoption of constructive ideas and action on all fronts. This is only one way in which "a magical elixir of renovation" for our civilisation​ could be found. The search continues while humanity strives for global change in 'a politically activated world'.

Oswald Spengler was a German historian of the last century who preceded Arnold Toynbee with the idea of analysing major civilizations to extract a general theory of history. The story of the eight High Cultures is that of societies that ultimately fail. Cultures eventually die, but produce fossils, canons of art and science and political forms. The period of fossilization, after the end of the culture proper, is what Spengler calls " Civilization " , which he said began for the West at the end of the 18th century. The work of modernity is the completion of the final forms. Spengler expected society to collapse or stagnate by 2200 AD, and maybe the recent robbery of the world's finances by the bankers is another sign of it. Spengler was the first philosopher of world history to write about the other great civilizations not as a mere prologue to Western history.

Religions have been one of the most important elements of human life throughout history. Many scholars think that religions are not only a life principle for humankind, but also function as an object of research and thinking. While the role of religion in the formation of civilizations has been accepted, it has also been widely debeted by scholors who remain to be divided in their explanation. For example, Henry Thomas Buckle , who is British historian, does not care the concept of religion in establishing his civilization theory. According to him, intellectual mind has a place more than religion in forming civilization. However, Toynbee argues that it has a close relationship between establishment of a new civilization and religion. He regards civilization as a attempt to create a social situation in which all humanity can live in complete harmony as members of a single family. Hence, is religion a determining factor in the emergence formation of civilizations? This paper will be explore situation of religion in shaping civilizations.

Arnold J. Toynbee was not only a controversial historian, but also a beguiling internationalist. This article analyses Toynbee as an observer of international politics. In particular, it examines both his understanding of contemporary foreign politics and his constant search of a stable world order. From the idealism of his youth to the utopianism of religious origin that marked his final years, passing through his partial and temporary disenchantment with regard to his youthful expectations, this essay will follow Toynbee’s path in the study of the international affairs of the Twentieth century.

Dagli anni Cinquanta del secolo scorso, il grande storico inglese Arnold J. Toynbee (1889- 1975) è stato spesso additato dai suoi critici come una sorta di profeta visionario. Nel suo sforzo poderoso e originale di costruire una macro-teoria delle trasformazioni politiche e internazionali, Toynbee ripercorre infatti vicende millenarie e vastissimi spazi geografici, così da poter disseppellire quelle fondamentali tendenze che contrassegnano il succedersi dei popoli e delle civiltà sulla ribalta della storia. A più di tre decadi di distanza dalla morte di Toynbee, tuttavia, le dinamiche della politica mondiale dopo la fine della Guerra fredda sembrano ridare attrattiva all’impresa teorica dello storico inglese e al suo tentativo di delineare un modello esplicativo generale del ciclo vitale delle civiltà. Toynbee e la sua opera acquistano allora una luce nuova e attuale. E da profeta, che molti suoi contemporanei giudicavano visionario, si trasforma in uno studioso che ha saputo leggere e interpretare in anticipo i più importanti mutamenti dell’ordine internazionale. Lo storico delle civiltà propone infatti uno ‘sguardo’ in grado di abbracciare l’ampio insieme dei processi politici in atto, collocandoli sulla linea del loro possibile (e forse assai probabile) orizzonte futuro. Uno ‘sguardo’ che risulta capace di oltrepassare la scorza più superficiale dei molteplici cambiamenti che stiamo vivendo.

I show how ten different senses of " dialectic " in Bernard Lonergan's corpus may be understood in terms of the outworking of degrees of self-transcendence—which may include " levels " of Lonergan's structure of the human good. I bring the work of R.G. Collingwood and Luigi Sturzo, fellow dialectical thinkers, into this discussion. The focus is on the " dialectic of history " involving what Lonergan calls the " longer cycle of decline. " I give a positive reading of the texts (which tend not to recur after 1959) but indicate various problems related to just what it is that makes for progress or decline in human history. Introduction. The aim of this note is to give an insight into the various ways in which Bernard Lonergan wrote of " dialectics. " Of course, this includes the idea of the " dialectic of history " which Lonergan began to develop early on in his career (although this exact phrase is not always used). However, there are many other texts which we hope to bring into some sort of unity, our approach being to present at the outset what we take to be the principle that orders the data. This will be presented in the next section that explains the rationale taken. In the first part, then, we first elaborate the ideas of dialectic and history drawing on ideas presented by Lonergan. From this base we then we can show the implications of our position, briefly, that the various forms of dialectic follow from the degrees of self-transcendence present in different parts of society. In the second part we will look particularly at the " dialectic of authority " offering some comparison with Luigi Sturzo and R. G. Collingwood. Finally we will point out some of the complications that have emerged for one of Lonergan's most cherished ideas.

Originally written as a philosophical work, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan incorporates in its story many elements that could be regarded as elements of the civilizational process in modern times. In this paper we will analyze these elements of the civilizational process and try to reassemble them into a clear theory of civilization. In order to conduct these analyses, the elements found in the story will be contrasted and perceived through the concepts of civilization found in the works of Ibn Khaldun and Arnold J. Toynbee. The resulting conclusion will point out many similarities between these authors in conceiving civilizations, especially in the notions of the development of intellect and the unity of humankind. But it will also show us the crucial divergence in the importance and existence of society and its binding elements such as 'aṣabiyya. Still, Ibn Tufayl's uniqueness and originality will be seen in his tripartite definition of existence and his own take on the goal/s of the civilizational process.

A step on the way to bringing Lonergan's social theory to prominence. I show how Lonergan tackles the fundamental questions of the discipline thus bringing him into conversation with Durkheim, Marx and Max Weber. However I continue to explore themes of reflexivity and critique and relate this to International Relations Theory.
The document takes the form of a commentary on the seventh chapter of Insight. I have now added a list of areas in which the chapter needs developing

The barbarian is the bugbear of the classicist. Because they rejected Christendom they are like the fool Othello, the “base Indian who threw away the pearl.” Lonergan shares the concern with the Christian civilization, but what to do? On the publication of Quadragesimo anno he had written “what Plato longed for, the liberal threw away,” and, with more foresight than insight, perhaps, suggested that eventually the villain of the peace, the so-called sovereign state, would be “liquidated.” Strange then, that, save for one isolated citation of Tertullian, Lonergan’s corpus never mentions the sovereign state, not for forty years, not until the final chapter of Method in Theology.

Martin Wight and Bernard Lonergan both realised the importance of history in their twenties, Wight discovering a universe of meaning in Toynbee’s Study and Lonergan spending “long hours” reading Thucydides. Each writer made significant contributions to their chosen field which included an overlap between epistemology and International Relations though ironically, Wight’s epistemological remarks and Lonergan’s geopolitical remarks both seem to have fallen off the radar screen. I will suggest that this is not too surprising given that both in their own way practiced a very diplomatic theology. In this paper I have tried to bring out some salient features and have tried to relate the two contributions. I argue that it is Lonergan’s unique methodological position that enables him to express a cosmopolitan hope for the future that, perhaps, marks a difference from Wight’s internationalism.

The author considers the problem of civilization. He defines civilization as a determinate form of man’s group life, or man’s culture in its social dimension. According to the author, a plurality of civilizations is generally accepted; in civilization, one can see the foundations for the functioning of law, politics, social life, and family life; civilization also plays an essential role in the religious life of man, just as religion plays a role in civilization. The author discusses the following topics: the biological theory of civilization, the historical theory of civilization, the sociological theory of civilization, the political-science theory of civilization, the civilization of death and the civilization of love, and the historical-philosophical theory of civilization.

Стаття присвячена аналізу кордонного характеру української
цивілізації згідно цивілізаційного підходу А. Тойнбі “заклик-відгук”. Для розв’язання поставленої проблеми розглядається розвиток вільної особистості зрозумілої в найширшому сенсі цього слова і таке значення концепту софійності для збереження та подальшого розвитку української цивілізації.

This essay forms the first part of a wider survey of the diverse presence of the Italian Middle Ages in British historical literature between the Risorgimento and the first post- war period. It focuses on the various models of treatment of the Italian past which may be found in the works of some specialists of Venetian history (R. Brown, H. Yule, H. Brown, W. Miller), authors of general histories of Rankean inspiration (T. Hodgkin, M. Creighton, Lord Acton), advocates of a nomothetic approach aiming to make history a branch of the science of politics (E. Freeman, J.R. Seeley, J. Bryce, A.J Toynbee). The attitudes showed by these scholars towards medieval and Renaissance Italy prove peculiarly revelatory of contrasts and uncertainties about the exact meaning of the trans- formation of historiography into a would-be scientific discipline which accompanied its professionalization in Great Britain.

Sixty years after the publication of the last volumes of the monumental A Study of History, the political thought of Arnold Joseph Toynbee seems to re-gain renewed actuality in interpreting the radical transformations of world-wide geopolitical scenery. From his Janus-headed perspective, through which he studies international affairs not only as relations between state and empire but also as encounters between civilizations, Toynbee investigates the long-term dynamics of world politics. This essay analyses the inextricable role of geopolitical factors in Toynbee’s theory. During the twentieth century, in fact, Toynbee’s historical and international analysis touched on time after time many of the topics of Geopolitics, such as the permanent opposition between continental and naval power. He sees geography as a conditioning rather than determining element in the conduct of foreign policy, and his works also implicitly reflect the emergence of Geopolitics in the field of International Relations. Moreover this article suggest that since the end of the Cold War the core of Toynbee’s theory, in particular the encounter and the clash between civilizations, can be regarded as a new vision in order to understand and perhaps foresee the future of world order.

Publiziert in Rubikon: https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/das-schwellenjahr Autor: Walter Pfluger, https://www.wpfluger-holistics.de/ Datum: 12.2019 Nur wenige Menschen dürften 1919 geahnt haben, wie wichtig die politischen Entscheidungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg für das zukünftige Zusammenleben auf unserem Planeten sein würden. Nach dem Ende des British Empire, der Monarchien und der klassischen Bourgeoisie wurde damals das Zeitalter der Demokratien, der Globalisierung und der Hegemonie der USA eingeläutet. Auch wenn das Leben der Menschen, im Großen wie im Kleinen, nicht nach einem Plan abläuft, ist erstaunlich zu sehen, wie sich ein roter Faden durch die Geschichte der Menschheit der letzten hundert Jahre zieht. *"Die überwiegende Mehrheit der Menschheit ist natürlich ihr außerwestlicher Teil, und das Paradoxon ist, daß wir Menschen des Westens Leute sind, deren Geschichtsbild noch oft jenem aus der Zeit vor Vasco da Gama gleicht. Ich persönlich glaube nicht daran, daß diese vorsintflutliche, traditionelle Geschichtsauffassung des Westens sich noch lange halten wird. Ich zweifle nicht, daß eine Neuorientierung bevorsteht, und es wird, denke ich, in unserem Falle eine Neuorientierung im buchstäblichen Sinne des Wortes sein"* (Arnold Toynbee 1968, 1, 2).